The CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) has been praised by regional and international partners for the role it continues to play in supporting the improvement of the quality of products and services traded within the region.
The praise, from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the European Union (EU), came as CROSQ was hosting the 32nd Meeting of its Council of National Bureaux of Standards’ Directors in Barbados recently.
Coordinator of Regional Cooperation and Integration in the Technical Cooperation Division of CDB, Ms. Andrea Power, told the opening of the meeting that CROSQ’s model of cost-effectively pooling resources between member states to provide “complementary systems and services” held the potential to be a benchmark model in the area of trade.
“CDB is pleased to participate in the 32nd meeting of the council of CROSQ. The Board’s commitment to and mandate to promote regional integration is rooted in its founding charter and as such the promotion of regional integration is a cross-cutting thematic priority within our strategic framework.
“Our commitment to regional integration is also rooted in a certain belief that if we get it right, regional integration represents a unique opportunity for the region to take advantage of international trade and insert itself into global value chains on our own terms and in a more sustainable and resilient way,” said the Bank official.
Ms. Power further called for a completion of the regional Single Market, stating, “While we have expended significant effort to remove restrictions found in our laws, we must now aggressively pursue what I call market making reforms and building out of regional public goods which will make the single market more efficient and make access to the single market more equitable.”
She highlighted the Bank’s recent commitment of US$700,000 towards developing national quality policies in five countries, based on CROSQ’s own Regional Quality Policy, as well as the intention to add another two regional analytical laboratories to the growing list of those being accredited.
Her comments followed those of the First Secretary to the Delegation of the European Union to Barbados, the Eastern Caribbean States, the OECS and CARICOM/CARIFORUM, Mr. Luca Pierantoni, who noted that the execution of the technical barriers to trade (TBT) component of the 10th European Development Fund programme, by German National Metrology Institute, CROSQ, the Quality Institute of the Dominican Republic was a success because of cooperation between entities.
Mr. Pierantoni maintained, “Experience has demonstrated that actions at the regional level will be unsuccessful without the commitment, support and involvement of concerned actors at the national level,” adding that the partnership of regional and national entities would continue to be important to the success of the upcoming TBT programme of the 11th EDF.
“One thing that we will always need to keep in mind is that whatever we do, whatever we establish, all the certification mechanisms that we set up, all the laboratories that we help operationalize, all the legislation that we help draft, all the regulations that we manage to review, should have only one aim: to benefit the people outside that door; to create more conducive conditions to make business in the Caribbean; to make the private sector of the Caribbean more competitive,” the EU First Secretary reiterated.
“We want a system that is centered on the private sector of the Caribbean, that responds to its needs; that focusses on the value chain; that builds on the potentials that the Caribbean economies have and concretely help the business to export more and better and to reach durable market penetration in Europe and elsewhere,” he said.
The meeting comprised two open days of dialogues with agencies including the Pan-American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO); the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA); the CARICOM Secretariat; the Caribbean Poultry Association; ASTM International; the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO); Caribbean Export Development Agency and several others.
